


lanterns lit

by mareza



Series: in quiet rooms [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: CRYBABY BABY FELIX!, Gen, Glenn being a bit of a gremlin even at age four, Grief/Mourning, Rodrigue doing his best to be a good parent but not able to stop being A Faerghus Man, and Lambert mentions (naturally), cameos from other members of the Fraldarius fam (Rodrigue's little brother and Felix), past Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius/Duchess Fraldarius, referenced Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius/Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd (one-sided)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareza/pseuds/mareza
Summary: “I miss Mama,” Glenn tells him once more, quieter this time. “Why can’t she come back?”Rodrigue knows that, if he had died and Eris had lived, Eris would be no better suited to explain this than he. He knows that she had often deferred these things to him, trusting in his court-bred tact over her blunt manner. He knows that he was the more measured between them, and she had always struggled with the emotions of others, their tears above all else.Even so, he wonders.Rodrigue comes home to his children, who are now without a mother. He does his best to be a good father.
Relationships: Glenn Fraldarius & Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius
Series: in quiet rooms [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664935
Comments: 24
Kudos: 73
Collections: Rodrigue Week 2020





	lanterns lit

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Referenced character death (the late Duchess Fraldarius) and references to widespread plague. This is Rodrigue's continued efforts to work through his grief, in his various ways, but he is a twenty nine year old who hasn't been doing a great job and will now be attempting to bury his emotions so he can be Of Service to others. This is also a situation where Rodrigue is a deeply loving father to Glenn and doing his very best, but Rodrigue is ALSO passing on the values of duty and service and self-sacrifice that have messed him up and which will inevitably mess up his children. You know how it goes: too deep into your values to notice that chivalry leads to the worship and glorification of death.
> 
>  **Notes:** All the context you need: Duchess Fraldarius (Eris) died of the plague going around Faerghus shortly after Felix was born. Glenn was angry with Rodrigue for telling him he couldn’t see her while she was dying. Because it's hard to explain to a child why you can't go near someone who has the plague! (Which, to be fair, the doctors were wrong about. I'm pretty sure the plague that hit Faerghus was closer to cholera than something airborne, since Cornelia fixing the infrastructure solved the issue. But no one here knows that.)
> 
> Rodrigue was super messed up by the grief of the loss, but Lambert’s wife had also just died of the plague, and Rodrigue felt like he couldn’t go to Lambert with his grief because just did not have the emotional strength to look after Lambert. So when Gautier called for reinforcements against Sreng, Rodrigue used the conflict there as an excuse to run north, because hey, fighting people is coping, right? And so is hanging out with someone who is so controlling that you can just mentally shut down around them and let them run your day to day life to numb out! This was, not surprisingly, a very stupid decision. This fic kicks off after Rodrigue returns from his two bad-idea weeks in Gautier.

The evening Rodrigue gets back to Fraldarius, he is greeted by his brother before he has even finished brushing down his horse.

“Welcome home,” Aristide tells him, handing him a stack of letters. He looks as exhausted as Rodrigue feels. “There hasn’t been any unexpected trouble. We have had no new reports of victims in Fraldarius.”

“Thank the Goddess,” Rodrigue murmurs. “What’s the news from the capital?”

Aristide presses his lips together for a moment. It amuses Rodrigue, sometimes, how many similar habits they have, despite their separated childhoods. “His Majesty has been an inspiration to his people,” Aristide says, a little too flatly. “He has taken it upon himself to rid the area around Fhirdiad of all unsavory folks who would take advantage of this misfortune.”

“Ah,” Rodrigue says. “I suppose I’ll have to head out tomorrow.”

“Your things have already been packed,” Aristide says. Not for the first time, Rodrigue is grateful that he was blessed with such a brother as this. “I’ve mapped out the safest route to the capital and contacted the quarantine checkpoints about letting you through.” 

It’s settled, then. There is no more time for indulgences and mistakes. He is a Fraldarius, and he will do his duty to his king and his friend. There is nothing else.

But. Rodrigue’s gloved hands curl inwards. The press of fabric into his skin offers little comfort. Slow and careful, watching Aristide’s face for his reaction, Rodrigue asks, “And how are my sons?”

Aristide does not glance away. He was better trained than that. Still, he does not have Rodrigue's court upbringing to mask his tells. “Felix is healthy,” he says. “He cries a great deal, and his nurse says he is hungry at all hours. All the doctors say there are no complications from the pregnancy.”

Aristide stops. Rodrigue, knowing what must be coming, waits.

Slowly, Aristide says, “Glenn has been willing to see his training master. Unfortunately, he has been giving his governess a bit more difficulty.”

“Of course,” Rodrigue says. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to shake off the fog of all this, and says, “Perhaps a change of scenery will help. Glenn always liked visiting the capital, and His Majesty loves to indulge him—”

Rodrigue cuts himself off. He understands Aristide's silence.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re right. It would be folly to expose them to that risk.”

“I’ll look after them,” Aristide tells him. Rodrigue remembers again that they have the same frown, but Aristide still tries to joke, “Glenn has only kicked me five or six times since you left.”

Rodrigue smiles at his brother for that. “There is no one I would sooner trust them to. Thank you.”

Aristide is too considerate to say aloud the name of the one person Rodrigue wishes could care for his children beside him. Instead, he says, “I’ll take handle your things. Go see your sons.”

Rodrigue takes the kindness for what it is. Still, he must stop in his office and sort through the letters his brother gave him first.

He finds Glenn in his playroom with his governess, the woman in the middle of attempting a story, and Glenn smacking one of his wooden soldiers with a toy sword. It is, Rodrigue has to admit, more or less what he expected.

The moment the governess catches sight of him, she rises to her feet, exclaiming, “Your Grace!” in greeting and sinking into a bow. Glenn yells out something wordless and hits the soldier harder, refusing to turn around.

Rodrigue holds up a hand to stop the formalities. “Please, Elise. Don’t trouble yourself. If I may have a moment alone with my son?”

“Of course, Your Grace,” she says. Elise leaves quickly, prudent enough to shut the door behind her. Glenn still doesn’t face him.

“Glenn?” Rodrigue takes a tentative step forward. Glenn hunches over, a sullenness that Rodrigue doesn’t need to see the face of to imagine. “Glenn, I would like to speak with you.”

“No.”

Rodrigue closes his eyes. He takes a moment to recount the names of the stars in the Dragon’s Wing constellation. Then, careful not to be too heavy on the footfall, he takes another step towards his son. “Please, Glenn.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rodrigue stops. “Glenn, I will have to travel again tomorrow. I had hoped we could spend more time together before I left.”

“I hate you!” Glenn shouts. Rodrigue knows what will happen before the wooden sword comes flying; he catches it easily, and now his angry son is facing him, all the fury his scant few years can manage on his face. “I don’t want you, I want Mama back!”

“I know,” Rodrigue says. He takes two more steps forward, then crouches down. He sets the sword on the ground. He holds out a hand to his son. “Please, Glenn. I don’t want to go without making up with you.”

“I don’t want to!” Glenn shouts again. There are tears in his blue eyes, but all that stubborn fury feels like it comes from another side of the family. “You should have let me see Mama!”

“I’m sorry,” Rodrigue says. “I couldn’t.”

“Bring her back!”

“I can’t. She’s gone.”

“Why? Why is she gone?”

“That was the Goddess’s will.”

“Then I hate the Goddess! And I hate you too!”

Rodrigue breathes again. “You don’t hate the Goddess,” he says. Carefully, he extends his hand once more. This time, he wraps it around one of Glenn’s fists, an easy thing with how small they still are. Glenn doesn’t rip it away, but there is the threat of tears again. His whole body is trembling. “Please, Glenn,” Rodrigue says.

When he holds open his arms, it’s as the snapping of a blade. Glenn rushes in and throws his arms around him, and then he is sobbing into his shoulder, a mess of tears and snot and all his anger in the beating of his fists against his father’s back. Rodrigue holds him, and he listens to his wailing, and he strokes his hair through the rage.

“I hate you!” Glenn screams at him. “I hate you! I wish you’d died instead!”

“I know,” Rodrigue says. “I understand.”

“I miss Mama,” Glenn sobs to him. “I want her back.”

“I miss her too,” Rodrigue says. “I’m sorry.”

After that, the screaming begins to ebb away, becoming cries, then whimpers. The tears don’t dry up, but Glenn’s breath begin to even out. Rodrigue closes his eyes and listens, pacing his own lungs to the regained steadiness of his son’s.

“I miss Mama,” Glenn tells him once more, quieter this time. “Why can’t she come back?”

Rodrigue knows that, if he had died and Eris had lived, Eris would be no better suited to explain this than he. He knows that she had often deferred these things to him, trusting in his court-bred tact over her blunt manner. He knows that he was the more measured between them, and she had always struggled with the emotions of others, their tears above all else.

Even so, he wonders.

“She can’t come back because she is dead,” Rodrigue tries. “When people die, they go to the Goddess and don’t return. That’s simply how the world is.”

“I _hate_ it,” Glenn tells him, punching his shoulder. It’s as hard as Glenn can manage and barely a tap. Rodrigue, despite himself, smiles.

“I hate it too. But we must take comfort where we can.” He draws back enough that he can see Glenn’s face, and so that Glenn can see his. Glenn’s frown is persistent, his face puffy and red from his sobbing. Absently, Rodrigue smudges away Glenn’s tears with his thumb. “Your mother died bravely and with spirit. She was herself to the very end, and there is little more we can ask for than that.”

For a moment, Glenn studies him. His glassy eyes are bright even in the low light of the candles. Then Glenn raises his hand to his father’s cheeks. Rodrigue stays still as Glenn brushes his thumb beneath Rodrigue’s eye.

With a strained voice that makes Rodrigue’s chest ache, Glenn says, “I wish she had stayed with us instead.”

“I do, too.” Rodrigue holds his son’s face in both of his hands. “But that isn’t what happened. We must remember instead what she gave us before she left. We have our memories of her. We can’t forget the stories she told you or the songs she sang. And we have Felix.”

“The baby,” Glenn says.

“That’s right. Do you know why your mother called him 'Felix'?”

Glenn shakes his head. Rodrigue combs fingers through his hair, so easily tangled, just as his own is. It’s hard to tell with an infant, but the baby’s eyes have already turned to Eris’s rusted brown, and his dark Fraldarius hair shows no hints of the waves that Glenn had, even at that age.

Rodrigue tells him, “His name means 'happy,' or 'lucky.' 'Fortunate.' Your mother chose it for him because we are lucky to have him. She wanted us to remember that always.”

Glenn asks, “Is Felix why she died?”

Rodrigue stills. “Who said that to you?”

“No one,” Glenn says, which is what he says when he’s protecting one of his friends. “But she died after Felix was born. Is Felix why?”

Rodrigue’s eyes narrow, but there is no point in pressing Glenn for more information. If Glenn wants to keep a secret, nothing will get it out of him. Rodrigue must follow other priorities. “No, Glenn. Your mother died because she became sick. That isn’t anyone’s fault.”

Eris had laughed when Rodrigue had come to her with news of the Queen's pregnancy. She had teased him and said, _“So you want me to do the work of bearing a playmate for your beloved king’s heir?”_ When the Goddess had favored them, she had been relentless in her demands, insisting with every absurd request for more sweets, _“You wanted this child, Rodrigue, so you damn well better get me what I want to feed it.”_ It had felt like fate that their baby would be born so near to their anniversary.

And then the Queen had given birth, and they had traveled to Fhirdiad see the new prince. And Eris, by the time she showed the signs of disease, was already in her own childbed. Weakened by it.

“Okay,” Glenn says, and throws himself into his father’s arms again. Rodrigue holds him like that for a long moment, measuring out his own breaths once again. Then, very carefully, he hoists him into the air and walks him out through the playroom door.

“Why don’t we go see your brother? I haven’t yet had the pleasure. It would be fun to spend some time together, the three of us, before I leave.”

Glenn frowns, apparently taking this as news. Rodrigue can’t exactly be surprised he forgot the earlier part of the conversation. “Where are you going?”

“I must go to the capital,” Rodrigue explains. “His Majesty needs me.”

“Can I come with you? And Felix, too,” he adds, gracious in his newly buoyant mood. “I want to see Uncle Lambert.”

“I’m sorry,” Rodrigue tells him. “But the sickness that took your mother is still in the capital. It isn’t safe for you or Felix yet.”

Glenn’s eyes go wide, and his grip around Rodrigue’s neck becomes near to strangling. “What about you? You can’t die too. You have to promise you won’t.”

It is a promise that Rodrigue has never made to anyone. Rodrigue learned that early, an instruction handed down from those tutors in Fhirdiad most careful to explain to him the difference between his role and Lambert’s. In well-measured and familiar words, Rodrigue explains, “We are Fraldariuses, Glenn. It is our duty to aid the royal family when they need us. And right now, Uncle Lambert needs your father’s help.”

“But what if you _die_?”

Rodrigue laughs and bounces Glenn in his arms, hoping to shake a smile out of him, but the good mood is gone now, and Glenn has too much stubbornness to let Rodrigue bring it back to him. “You needn’t worry about that. Your uncle has already arranged for me to take the safest path. I’m old enough that it’s much safer for me than it is for you or your brother.”

After a moment of thought, Glenn seems to believe it, and he drops his head onto Rodrigue’s shoulder. Rodrigue presses his hand to the back of Glenn’s head. He wonders, not for the first time, at how so precious a thing could be so easy to carry through his ancestors’ stone halls.

When they arrive in the nursery, Felix is sleeping. Glenn has seen enough of his brother in the past two months to know not to be loud. Rodrigue sets Glenn down and offers him his hand, and they walk to Felix’s cradle together, at Glenn’s pace. Glenn is tall enough now to peer through the bars at his little brother, all swaddled up in Fraldarius blue, and study his pudgy face.

He does look well. The sickness that carried off his mother does not seem to have touched him. Rodrigue can’t help but see her in the turn of the boy’s nose.

“I’ll protect him,” Glenn says suddenly. “Like you protect Uncle Lambert. I’ll protect the new prince, too. No one will die, because I’ll keep them safe.”

For a moment, Rodrigue goes very still. He isn’t entirely certain why. 

Then he crouches down at Glenn’s side, and he smiles at him. “Of course. You are a Fraldarius, and we are the shield of our kingdom. And more than that, you are your mother’s son, Glenn. She, too, lived to protect those she loved best.”

Glenn beams at the praise, and Rodrigue can see the wonderful knight he will be, bold and brave and perhaps a little bloody-minded, just as Eris was, eager and competitive but true of heart. He’ll look out for his little brother and for the young prince, and for Petyr and Pauline’s daughter as well, becoming her friend first and so making a steady marriage for them both, where each can seek fulfilment. And as he grows older, and active service suits him less, Glenn will become a teacher to the heirs of Lambert’s son, a favorite who will inspire them to be their best. It will be one of the great pleasures of Rodrigue’s life to watch him mature into so fine a man. He knows Glenn will not fall short.

Eris would have wanted to see it.

“Come,” Rodrigue says, picking up Glenn once again. “We don’t want to wake up your brother.” He makes sure he’s out the nursery before he says, “Why don’t I tell you a story before bed?”

As predicted, the cheer Glenn lets out would be loud enough to wake Felix from his sleep if there weren’t now a thick wooden door between them. “I want to hear about Loog and Kyphon!”

“There are a great many stories about Loog and Kyphon,” Rodrigue reminds his son. “Which one do you want to hear?”

“I want to hear the one with the assassin! Where Kyphon blocks the knife, and he goes, ‘Hah! Rah! Gah!’”

Rodrigue has to duck his head away to avoid a blow as Glenn acts out his version of the fight scene. Rodrigue must admit, his sword form is coming along. “‘Loog and the Black Knife,’ then,” Rodrigue promises. “And after that, you’ll go to bed.”

“I want _two_ stories,” Glenn tells him. “You have to tell me two stories.”

“Once you’re in bed,” Rodrigue promises, “I will tell you as many stories as it takes for you to go to sleep.”

Glenn is in his dreams well before they even get to the first tale’s climactic battle. Rodrigue kisses him once on the top of his head, blows out the candle, and returns to his office. He has work yet to do before the morning.

It is a long and unpleasant ride to Fhirdiad the next day. But Glenn made certain to wake up to see him off. Rodrigue carries that with him on the journey to his king.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on twitter at [@marezafic](https://twitter.com/marezafic)! More information on this universe, fondly nicknamed the JCU (Jock Cinematic Universe), can be found in [this twitter moment](https://twitter.com/i/events/1195471121732243456?s=13).


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